When the Dead Awaken

by Steffen Jacobsen

  With his left hand Primo Alba would be able to reach the young woman, one of the first in the history of the GIS to achieve full active field status. The girl was a goth and the European tae kwon do champion at her weight. She should really be sleeping now, but was probably too agitated at the sight of Urs Savelli to nod off. Just like Primo she was lying quietly looking up at the roof.

  Primo Alba entertained himself by visualizing a bare-knuckle fight between the young female GIS soldier and Assistant Public Prosecutor Sabrina D’Avalos.

  He had no doubts about the hypothetical outcome.

  The ‘Little Miss Girl Dragon versus The Three Brothers from Hell’ technique. Few things could match that, he thought.

  He sent an encrypted text message to Federico Renda’s mobile informing him of Savelli’s arrival. He assumed that Renda was nearby in his customized Mercedes.

  They had reviewed their options: (1) they could arrest Savelli and undoubtedly have him put away for a long list of murders, but they would lose L’Artista, the fabled female assassin who was at the top of Federico Renda’s personal wanted list – after all, it was she who had put him in a wheelchair. However, the public prosecutor was a rational man and would at all times set aside private motives in pursuit of the greater good; or (2) they could let Savelli carry on, let him drip his poison into the ear of Don Francesco and subsequently hope that their sinister plans would involve activating L’Artista with a homing pigeon – if that really was what Signor Marchese’s pigeons were used for … and then what? Wait for the assassin to execute yet another innocent victim – perhaps Sabrina D’Avalos herself – before they intervened?

  Everyone had been allowed to voice their opinion. Captain Primo Alba was a democratic leader. Within reason. The girl with the tattoos had suggested positioning a group of falconers around Signor Marchese’s house and pigeon cages to catch and intercept the lethal message with their hawks and falcons. Primo Alba had asked if she knew of any. And what was the overall success rate of a goshawk? Unless it was one hundred per cent, they were back at square one. The lad had suggested using one of the military’s unmanned drones to follow the pigeon, but a call to a specialist in the air force had put a stop to that idea: no matter how advanced drones were these days, they were unable to follow a specific bird through an airspace of possibly several hundred kilometres populated with other birds of the same size and with the same infrared signatures. Pigeons are social animals, the man had told them. It would probably join up with other pigeons and roost at night with them.

  The tranquillizer had been Primo Alba’s suggestion: knock out the old man before he had time to dispatch the pigeon, find Terrasino’s code and break it as quickly as possible. Then send another pigeon fitted with an electronic tracker device and follow it to L’Artista’s hideout.

  And that was the plan.

  The mobile vibrated his hand.

  Renda.

  Wait, was his order. Wait and see.

  He whispered the command into his throat microphone.

  The young woman sighed and closed her eyes.

  Don Francesco and Urs Savelli were sitting on their usual bench shaded by the pergola. Savelli leaned back and looked at the vines while he let Don Francesco digest the news. Good as well as bad.

  ‘This Cesare,’ Don Francesco said. ‘He couldn’t tell the difference between a dead man and a living one? He crushed Forlani’s car and then he shot him?’

  He made an impatient gesture with his liver-spotted hand. He had never been in any doubt whether a man was dead or alive.

  ‘I don’t suppose a man’s responsibility exceeds his ability, Don.’

  ‘Are you making excuses for him?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I am. I’m …’

  The Capo looked closely at Savelli.

  ‘What’s wrong, Urs? Have you made up your mind to fail?’

  ‘You’re very perceptive, Don.’

  The old man shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘It’s what we do. We know about people.’

  ‘I’ll speak to Cesare,’ Savelli promised. ‘At length.’

  ‘You do that. But Massimiliano Di Luca is a problem.’

  ‘He is famous,’ the Albanian said.

  The Capo nodded.

  ‘A genius, they say. At dressmaking.’

  ‘If he dies, the media will—’

  ‘Without a doubt. But he can do a lot of damage to us, Urs. The Venetian and this Giulio Forlani. Again.’

  ‘We can’t kill him, but equally we can’t let him continue.’

  The old man looked towards the veranda. He could just make out the outline of Anna, his wife, in the deep shadows. She hadn’t spoken an intelligible word for three years.

  Urs Savelli followed his gaze.

  ‘Not dead and yet not fully alive,’ Don Francesco pondered.

  He turned to the Albanian.

  ‘Somewhere in between, Urs.’

  Savelli looked into the other man’s eyes. The old man never ceased to amaze him.

  ‘Datura?’ he suggested.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘L’Artista?’

  ‘Of course. He’ll be forgotten, Urs.’

  ‘And Forlani?’

  ‘They’re friends, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where one is you may find the other.’

  It was harder than Primo Alba had thought. The hardest thing he had ever done in his GIS career. Just watching Urs Savelli, the artist of death, was intolerable, to see him stroll back through the tunnel, stopping briefly in Signor Marchese’s house – possibly to deliver a vital message, or possibly not – and drive away from the carpenter’s house, unchallenged.

  Every instinct in Primo Alba begged and pleaded with him to hit the send button on the radio and give the order: to the young man who was pretending to fix his perfectly functioning motorbike by the kerb in Via Nicola Fele opposite the carpenter’s house; to the young couple out for a walk with an empty pram a little further down the road; to the man who was busy loading floor tiles into his van in the car park outside the builders’ merchant. All were members of the GIS, all were excellent marksmen and all of them longed to blast Urs Savelli out of his expensive Paul Smith socks. Once and for all.

  The girl, who was now manning the telescope and the CO2 rifle didn’t move. Primo Alba could hear her steady breathing.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Do nothing.’

  The sun was about to set when he sensed a further heightening of the girl’s concentration. Primo Alba crawled on his hands and knees across the treacherous planks and put his eye to the telescope.

  The carpenter had opened the door to the courtyard with the pigeon lofts. It was dark enough for the light from the kitchen to cast an elongated rectangle across the flagstones. Signor Marchese was carrying a small wooden cage in his hands. The girl took a deep breath and pressed the rear sight to her eye. Slowly she exhaled till her lungs were half full and then held her breath. The breathing of the long-distance sniper. Primo Alba placed his hand on her thigh and bent his fingers to signal to her silently. Marchese’s head and shoulders disappeared behind the middle of the three pigeon lofts. Primo Alba counted the seconds. The carpenter’s head appeared. The girl took another precise breath. She was as still as a statue.

  Everyone had expected the pigeon to be thrown up into the air like a child tossing a handful of sea water into the sun.

  Just before that point the girl would fire the tranquillizer dart.

  But Signor Marchese never raised his arms in the expected sacrificial gesture. He merely closed an invisible hatch in the pigeon loft, turned around and went back into the kitchen with the cage.

  Primo’s earpiece crackled from everyone’s voices.

  ‘Was there something in the cage?’ he said, not directing the question at anyone in particular.

  ‘Don’t know,’ muttered the girl on her exhale.

  ‘Giovanni?’

  ‘I didn’t see,’ said the boy who had
wedged himself in next to Prima Alba.

  ‘Vaffanculo!’ the girl muttered.

  ‘Now!’ said a new voice in the earpiece.

  ‘What?!’

  The young biker outside the carpenter’s house reported in an agitated voice that Marchese had just launched a bright white homing pigeon from his front garden. The bird had soared in a tight spiral before setting its compass to north-north-east. Like an arrow. It was gone. And hadn’t any of the geniuses in the corn silo noticed the low-hanging high voltage cables that went across the industrial area just south of Marchese’s house? Of course he wouldn’t send his pigeons that way!

  Primo Alba removed his hand from the girl’s leg and leaned against a crumbling beam.

  And put his hand right into a pile of fresh pigeon crap.

  Porca puttana!

  ‘Perhaps it was nothing,’ the boy said out into the darkness.

  ‘I agree,’ the girl said quietly. ‘Probably just a bird for another nerd from their little brotherhood of pigeon fanciers. A breeder, something like that.’

  It was hard not to love them.

  The public prosecutor, His Excellency Federico Renda, wasn’t quite so gracious, but neither did he waste time pointing the finger. What was done was done and in every field operation, no matter how well planned, there was always an unexpected, infuriating element of randomness.

  Had Captain Alba heard from Sabrina D’Avalos? Like where she was, for example?

  Primo Alba had called her last known mobile telephone number at least ten times and sent her a series of inquisitorial text messages without result. Total silence.

  Go home, Federico Renda advised him. Get some rest. Regroup. If something unusual happens in the next few days, something that could possibly be the work of L’Artista – they would bring in the carpenter.

  A sack over his head and a truck battery were sure to produce some much wanted answers.

  CHAPTER 35

  Ticino, Milan

  ‘Who are the people looking for Giulio?’ Massimiliano Di Luca asked that same evening over the rabbit ragout that Alberto had prepared.

  Alberto joined them for dinner and turned out to be a pleasant and witty man. Sabrina noticed that the Venetian never gave him a direct order.

  She glanced at Alberto.

  ‘I don’t believe we have secrets from Alberto,’ Giulio Forlani muttered.

  ‘Certainly not,’ the designer said.

  ‘The Terrasino clan. The aristocracy of the Camorra,’ she said. ‘The biggest, oldest, best organized and wealthiest family. They have interests in container ports, landfill sites and waste management, every new building and public construction project in and around Naples … and the piracy industry. They still have a handful of sweatshops in Naples where illegal immigrants from Eastern Europe and China work, but most of their bootleg products are now manufactured in Macao, Mumbai and Shanghai. They make sure that the designs and the know-how reach the Far East, and the Chinese take care of the rest.’

  Massimiliano Di Luca nodded: ‘That part we already know, dottoressa, but who exactly are they?’

  ‘Urs Savelli,’ she began. ‘An Albanian. He’s a senior Camorrista responsible for the family’s bootleg industry. He organized the attack on Nanometric and he personally killed the chemist Hanna Schmidt and, more recently, Doctor Mazzaferro’s girlfriend. We have no photographs of him. No description. We know he carries a walking stick and that’s it. No one knows where he comes from, how old he is or what his real name is. Perhaps even he doesn’t know. As a criminal he’s a complete success: a killer with no identity.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Then there is L’Artista. The sharp end of the Camorra. A younger woman. She is Francesco Terrasino’s black angel of death. She is used for executions and has an almost one-hundred-per-cent success rate. She was the one who put my boss, Federico Renda, in a wheelchair.’

  ‘A young woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know what she looks like? Christ, how are we even supposed to know what we’re looking out for?’

  ‘You won’t ever see her,’ Sabrina assured him. ‘She’s a specialist assassin for difficult, famous or inaccessible people. She travels. She will kill all over the world for Don Terrasino. She’s well educated and innovative. She killed Paolo Iacovelli and Fabiano Batista.’ Sabrina looked down at the table. ‘She killed Lucia and Salvatore Forlani. And my father.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s a woman?’ Di Luca asked. ‘Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I really can’t—’

  ‘We have a single night-time recording from a surveillance camera in a multi-storey car park in Milan. She’s walking across one of the levels. Later you see her getting into the back of a Volvo belonging to a private detective. A former police inspector. He was good at his job. His body was later found in the boot of his car, but he was buried without his head.’

  Sabrina looked at the designer.

  ‘I’ll make sure you get protection, maestro.’

  ‘Me? I think you should spend your resources on my friend Giulio.’

  ‘I’ll take good care of him, too,’ she said gravely.

  ‘I don’t feel at risk, dottoressa. As far as everyone – including the Camorra – is concerned, I was merely one of Nanometric’s backers. Nothing more. Besides …’

  ‘Yes?’

  Massimiliano Di Luca looked at Giulio and Alberto, who both shook their heads.

  ‘Yes!’ The Venetian looked at Sabrina. ‘I’m dying. I wouldn’t mind leaving with a heroic monologue … for an audience of three … That’s not asking too much, is it? … But the point I’m trying to make is that there isn’t very much to protect any more, signorina. You’re looking at the sad remains of what was once Massimiliano Di Luca.’

  ‘As you wish. But I think you underestimate your own importance. If Savelli knows that Giulio is alive and on the run, he’ll expect him to call on old friends. And he’ll undoubtedly know of this house.’

  ‘If the Camorra start killing designers, who will make the things they rip off? Besides, Giulio could be anywhere in the world. Absolutely no one knows that he and I have been in contact in the last few years.’

  ‘I’m not sure that the Camorra think like that,’ Sabrina said. ‘But tell me what happened on the fifth of September 2007. Did you meet my father?’

  She found the tote ticket in her pocket and put it on the table.

  Di Luca turned it over in his hand.

  ‘Bucefalo. A fine animal. Everyone knew he was, obviously, so the odds were small. Your father found me on San Siro. I had been waiting for Giulio in Dal Pescatore. Our lunch date was a bit vague because I knew he was busy with the patents applications, but I hoped that he would have time to stop by. Drink a toast. It was a big day for the Camera Nazionale. A very big day.’

  He looked at Giulio Forlani across the kitchen table. In a presumably extremely rare attack of affection they clasped each other’s hands. Then Di Luca’s hand returned to the stem of his wine glass. He hadn’t touched a drop and had eaten practically nothing. He rested his chin in his hand, blinked wearily and looked at Sabrina.

  ‘I don’t know … I heard strange music on the radio in the bar as though a radio channel from the twenties had suddenly sprung to life and I had this terrible premonition. And I just knew … I just knew something dreadful was about to happen.’

  ‘And my father?’

  ‘Your father was unique in every way, dottoressa. He told me about Giulio. Together we went to the Ospedale Maggiore, but Giulio was in theatre. Afterwards he drove me to my studio. He often spoke about you, signorina. More about you than about your brothers. “The family’s last warrior,” he said. I can see that he was right.’

  ‘Thank you. And the code? Corriere della Sera?’

  ‘Oh, yes. That was my idea. Your father was obviously busy organizing everything. Hiding Lucia and the boy, taking care of Giulio, getting a handle on what had really happened at Nanometric. He had already arranged to ha
ve Giulio flown to the US if …’

  ‘I survived.’ Giulio Forlani completed his sentence.

  ‘Exactly. If you survived. I thought about how we could all keep in contact when everything had …’ The designer blushed slightly. ‘It’s a bit Boys’ Own, I admit. But it was a good method.’

  ‘And it worked,’ Forlani said, looking at Sabrina.

  ‘So the Camorra will carry on?’ Alberto wanted to know. ‘Until they find Dr Forlani again?’

  ‘Or until he dies again,’ she said, instantly wishing the ground would open up and swallow her. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!’

  She cast her eyes down at the table and went red.

  But Giulio Forlani and Massimiliano Di Luca were both laughing.

  ‘Now that might be an idea,’ Di Luca said.

  ‘I know an undertaker,’ Giulio Forlani said.

  Sabrina looked at him.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Forget it,’ he said.

  ‘No. What did you mean, Giulio?’

  ‘Nothing. Like I said, forget I ever mentioned it.’

  CHAPTER 36

  Ticino, Milan

  The house was more than quiet. There was a deep humming silence, like the noon hour by Lake Como, when the cicadas fell silent and the wind calmed down.

  When the rest of her family was asleep, Sabrina would lie awake in her bed – not so very different from the one she had now been shown to by Alberto – and gaze at the columns of sunlight in between the shutters. Stare as far into the light as she dared, because she knew that deep inside a white light there was a black core that one should never look at for a long time.

  She had thought more about her childhood in these last few days than for many years.

  The glow of her cigarette had almost reached her fingers when she remembered her mobile. She had heard it ring from the guest bedroom upstairs while they ate. Only the blasted Primo-Nestore had that number and she had no wish to talk or listen to him. It would mean new thoughts, new impossible choices, new disasters, new dead doctors and mistresses in first-class train compartments – and yearning – if she answered that phone.